The National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) leads several cutting-edge research projects and initiatives that further our mission on collecting and disseminating objective information on the science and engineering (S&E) enterprise.

Data access and discovery continue to be popular topics of interest across the federal data ecosystem. As part of this dialogue, NCSES participated in a special issue of the Harvard Data Science Review (HDSR), Democratizing Data: Discovering Data Use and Value for Research and Policy, which highlighted the findings, successes, and lessons learned from the Democratizing Data pilot study and explored the potential of technology and artificial intelligence (AI) to build on these initial efforts. The pilot study seeks to understand how public data are being used in science, enabling the government to make more transparent, informed decisions about public investments. 

The four agency heads who participated in the pilot study sat down for a fireside chat hosted by the former U.S. Chief Statistician, Nancy Potok, to shed light on the significance of understanding data use to inform decision making. To listen to the chat, please visit The View from Four Statistical Agencies. To read the paper co-authored by NCSES as part of the special HDSR issue, please visit Search for How Data Have Been Used: Intuitive Labels for Data Search and Discovery. 

An upcoming webinar will present highlights of the HDSR special issue and will include a visit from NCSES Director Emilda Rivers on day two of the event. Event details and registration link are below. 

America’s Data Hub Consortium (ADC) has recently launched its Idea Bank and is seeking ideas! Stakeholder input may be used to inform future project solicitations and other activities that ADC will undertake, including those to inform a potential National Secure Data Service. Ideas submitted will be shared publicly, so they must be nonproprietary and non-attributional.

To submit an idea, please visit ADC’s Idea Bank and complete the form.  

Users wanted a way to preserve their work in the table builder, so the NCSES Data Team responded by adding a “Save and Load” feature. This improvement is a direct result of NCSES’s continuous collection of user feedback. “Save and Load” increases productivity by allowing users to save time and share work. Save time by storing frequently used table definitions; share work by sending those table definitions to other users to load!

Click here to see a demo of saving and loading table definitions and to download supporting tip sheets.

The National Science Foundation (NSF), in partnership with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the White House Office of Management and Budget, and other federal agencies, is leading an exciting new initiative that aims to support social, economic, and behavioral science research that leverages federal data and scientific advances in researching equity-related topics for greater public benefit. The Analytics for Equity Initiative links researchers directly with federal agencies seeking to answer key research questions that agencies hope to answer in service of their priorities. The goal is to fund researchers to produce rigorous research and empirical evidence in equity-related topics that both federal agencies and other organizations can use to increase the impact of equity-focused evidence-based strategies.

Please visit the Analytics for Equity Initiative page for more information on participating agencies and related resources.

America’s DataHub Consortium (ADC) is a groundbreaking initiative sponsored by NCSES to collaborate with the Federal Statistical System. ADC advances NCSES’s mission by supporting exciting activities related to increased data access and sharing, strengthening infrastructure, and promoting innovative analysis across the S&E landscape. An article on this initiative, America's DataHub Consortium: Seeing — and Understanding — the Entire Elephant, is available through the National Science Foundation. 

In 2022, the ADC awarded five projects totaling $3.5M in funding. The projects aim to provide the government with a more comprehensive understanding of the availability and demand for global science and engineering training and talent. 

Interested in learning more? Please visit americasdatahub.org.

NCSES and the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) are collaborating on a new project to better understand production and use of research and development and other intellectual property products in global value chains (GVCs). In partnership with NCSES, BEA released its first prototype of data on value added trade in December 2021. These data provide new insights into the way U.S. knowledge- and technology-intensive (KTI) industries and other sectors of the economy interact in production and trade activities involving GVCs. For more information on KTI industries, please visit Production and Trade of Knowledge- and Technology-Intensive Industries. Science and Engineering Indicators 2022. 

On 16 March 2023, updated and expanded prototype statistics were published that look more deeply into U.S. exports, revealing the mix of foreign and domestic content used to make exported goods and services (also known as trade in value added; TiVA). TiVA statistics are part of a joint effort between BEA and NCSES to increase understanding of U.S. trade and global value chains—the increasingly complicated supply chains that can link multiple countries together in the stages to produce a final good or service. New TiVA data are available in BEA’s interactive tables. For more information, please visit BEA's Global Value Chains Web page. A blog article is also available that offers a closer look at these new TiVA statistics.

For more information on this project, please contact

Francisco Moris
703-292-4678
fmoris@nsf.gov

NCSES is partnering with the PEERS Data Hub (Partnership for Expanding Education Research in STEM) community to highlight NCSES STEM data and to connect with other peer researchers who are interested in exchanging ideas on various topics such as the S&E workforce, fields of study, and education. Join the conversation here.

One emerging research area for the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) is the skilled technical workforce (STW)—individuals who use science and engineering (S&E) skills in their jobs but do not have a bachelor’s degree. In response to interest from the National Academies' Committee on National Statistics, the National Science Board's STW Task Force, and the Innovations in Mentoring, Training, and Apprenticeships Act (2018), NCSES has established a STW Initiative in order to guide efforts to measure and understand the STW.

In support of the STW Initiative, NCSES is proud to sponsor the National Training, Education, and Workforce Survey (NTEWS), which will launch late April 2022. The NTEWS serves to measure and understand the following research concepts of national interest:

Additionally, the NTEWS will expand upon other NCSES surveys targeting the college-education workforce by providing new data on the workforce who do not have a bachelor’s degree or higher. The data from the 2022 NTEWS will serve as the baseline for future cycles and will contribute to NCSES's efforts to assess and support the STW.

Find out more about the STW Initiative here.